iPhone 11 Pro Max Camera issues

Is this on every image? If so, is there anything on the lenses?

As to the secondary issue, this may not be an option for you, but if you have room on a credit card for them to place a hold for the amount of the phone they have an option where they will send you a replacement phone and a box to ship yours back to them. The hold will stay on your card until they receive your phone back. I have done this several times because I do not want to be without my phone while waiting for repairs either. They do not charge your card unless they do not receive your phone. I believe it is called an expedited repair and you have to ask for it.

I have grainy pics in all light conditions, but also some weird reflection glare on them when there are bright lights (pics below).

i called Apple, did all diagnostics which were fine, updated software etc and said I should swap the phone.

I’m in Japan travelling so I went to the store and showed them, they agreed it’s bad but couldn’t swap as they don’t have the American model. They did log an issue internally though and asked me to swap the phone when I get back.

you’ll se below, that right above the bright objects you really have the same view upside down.

After you take a photo, go into the photos app and open the editing tools and see if it takes a second to load and clear up. Mine look like crap in the app, but the photos themselves are actually good. I’ve also noticed if you double tap to zoom in and back out, they clear up. That’ll rule out if it’s a hardware issue or not. Also, if you use iCloud photos, take your photo and look at that same photo elsewhere like on a Mac or iPad. I take photos on my 11 that look awful in the app, but look fantastic through iCloud photos on my iPad. That tells me that my phone is fine, but there’s a software issue somewhere... you may have the same.

That is so completely NOT the results I've had with my iPhone 11 Pro Max that I would say you should take your phone in for service if that is actually true.

Genius Bar Reservation and Apple Support Options - Apple

This is by no means a photo which is anything more than a quick snapshot I took while at a stop light - it was even rushed as the light had just turned green and so isn't even straight, but the sharpness and resolution is incredible and something you would have needed a DSLR to produce just a few years ago.

Josh,

If you took the time to actually read my responses, there would have been no need for you to send this response to me. I have consistently acknowledged through many responses that I am sure that a few people got bad hardware. It happens with EVERY iPhone release. When you sell tens of millions of units with parts sourced from around the world, you can't help but have a small percentage that are bad. That is not in dispute. What is in dispute is people like alexandrufrombacau and others who are making the claim that the iPhones 11 are not capable of taking great pictures. They are not trying to claim that there are some bad units. They are making blanket claims that the iPhones 11 are failed iPhone models which are not capable of taking photos that are better than even iPhone models from years ago. This is simply false information and these false claims need to be disputed when they are made.

As to your phone, I'm sorry that you are having this trouble. Take it back to Apple immediately and get it replaced.

So after a few days playing around with my 11 after getting it exchanged to find the same issue, I’ve noticed something somebody did mention earlier. When I take photos no matter the light, they come out noisy and have a small amount of blur in the photos app. If I zoom in and out, the photos clear up and look phenomenal. Also, I noticed as I swipe through the photos I take, they’re crisp for a nano second and blur out until I zoom in and back out. I took photos on both the 11 and also my XR I need to return to Verizon and they both do it. I feel some of the issues other people may be seeing are within the photos app itself and not the camera hardware. I’ll post an example of the same photo when it’s just opened in the app and also zoomed in and back out. Hopefully it’ll show on here

I would hazard a guess there is a smudge on the sensor or internally on the lens and your phone needs to be replaced. Even if the Apple Store isn't close to you, I'd suggest going to your Apple Store for resolution to this.

I’ve been having the similar camera issue. Front camera is terrible and makes me look cartoonish and the ultra wide lens is really grainy. I went to the Apple store and they didn’t have my a replacement but told me to come back tomorrow to get a new phone as they agreed with me that there is a camera issue with my phone.

So I’ve been conducting some tests, my biggest issue is the strange blurry effect the built in camera app adds to photos in low light, the X and XS don’t do this (in fact on all the older iPhones I’ve tested it doesn’t). Taking a photo or recording a video with Instagram (as a example) doesn’t add this effect, so I’m guessing the issue is within the camera app built into iOS 13, it’s like some beautifying filter. I’m hoping this will get fixed in a update. It’s definitely NOT a hardware issue, I work in a phone shop and every 11 I’ve tested does the exact same thing.

rbrylawski wrote:

No. These people are convinced the camera is terrible. Case in point. I have a friend who told me he was going to return his Pro 11 because he felt the camera didn't live up to what he thought it should provide. He showed me examples, many just like the totally awful photos some have posted here. I was able to sit down with him and help him understand how the lenses work, why the Ultra Wide lens was a very poor choice in low light, and covered many simple photographic principles and guess what? Once he learned how to use which lens, for which need, he started taking some nice photos. He didn't understand the Ultra Wide lens doesn't work well in low light, or that it doesn't have OIS. He didn't understand how to frame a picture to take advantage of dept of field. He didn't understand how to use Night Mode or that it requires the phone to be held completely still for the number of seconds shown on the screen.

I would so love to take some of the phones people are complaining about and take some photos with them. I'm betting I can take some pretty darn nice pictures. In most situations here (not all of course), the bad photos are the fault of the photographer, not the camera. There's an old quote "It's not Camera, It's the Photographer" and that is so true as it relates to this thread.

Not sure what happened with my full post, but the section completes what I had written.

frankxiv, those are some stunning photos! Great job and it really shows what these cameras can do when they are used to their fullest ability!

Speaking as a photographer, here are some issues that may be influencing how blurry your photo is:

available light - the lower the light, the slower the shutter speed in order to capture more light on the sensor; if you don't have a tripod then you're not going to get a sharp image. the lower the light, the higher the ISO; higher ISO brings more unwanted noise and more "approximation" of light (meaning it may not capture exactly what you can see with your eye because it is digitally trying to approximate what the pixels should be based on available light that is able to hit the sensor).

dirty glass - if you didn't clean camera lens area and are getting a blurry image, no surprise there. any oils/grease/dirt from your fingers, hands, clothes, or surfaces you place the phone on will distort the light that is hitting your cameras sensor, and this can result in a blurry image or blurry parts of an image.

extra glass - if you have a case that has extra glass in front of the extra glass built into the iphone's body that is in front of the core lens then you'll get more light distortion and a less sharp image. this is the reason I don't shoot with lens protectors on my dslr lenses... protectors are just another element light has to travel through before it hits the sensor and it can result in a less sharp or more blurry image.

aperture setting - i'm not an expert on the iphone 11 pro's lenses, but I think its lenses are fixed like all smartphone lenses. this means you're always shooting at f/2.4 for the ultra-wide 13mm lens, f/1.8 for the 26mm lens, and f/2 for the 52mm lens. these are very wide apertures, and the wider the aperture the shallower the depth of field (what is sharp and in focus). the advantage is these let in a lot of light, but the disadvantage is that you have to select the focus area properly and hold the camera at the right angle for what you're trying to shoot. for example, if you're trying to photograph a plate of food, and you just photograph the plate from the front instead of directly overhead, then depending on where you focused and how far away you are from the plate part of that plate will be in focus and part of it will be out of focus.

The image you shared above is quite dark, and so any blurryness i would attribute to lack of light and possibly a dirty lens area.

I’ve experienced this myself. Picture is not sharp when viewed in the gallery and sharp when I zoom in to the picture. I have the iPhone 11. I realized that in the camera settings under the format option there are two different setting in which the format will save. The high efficiency is used to save space on the phone. The most compatible is what we want to see. Picture will save sharply when they are saved in the most compatible setting. The high efficiency setting saves things to appear softer or blurry since that is how we typically say it. Try changing it to most compatible.

you can see the difference in the bricks on the wall. One is softer ( high efficiency) and the other is sharp ( most compatible). Hopefully that helps some.

I have noticed from the beginning that the ultra wide on the iPhone 11 Pro was not as good as the other two cameras. I thought the ultra wide was something I was going to love and it turned out to not be something that I use much at all...except in very isolated cases.

Last night, the noise on the ultra wide was especially bad. I was shooting indoors, but there was plenty of light and the main lens worked perfectly. I ended up doing a hard reset of the phone and noticed it was far better. I also wiped the lens...as I think is was causing problems as well.

SUGGESTION:

I would recommend those with major issues, try using a third party app for recording and see if the results are the same or if they change for you. I used FiLMiC Pro and found that the noise from the ultra wide was improved over the stock app.

So my point in suggesting that is that it may help isolate whether the problem is the software or the hardware. I would consider the argument that it would not eliminate the software as the culprit, as software for the core camera functions of iOS are still in use. In my case...it seemed to help.

I didn't consider the ultra wide lens quality to be a problem until Deep Fusion was introduced in 13.2.

I was never really all that impressed with the ultra wide lens quality from day 1. At these prices, we should expect the quality of the ultra wide to be on par with the other 2.

I cannot speak for every situation on this thread...but I suspect that a software update should help with many of these problems that we are having.

I think the 11 pro max camera is awesome. Excellent low light results. Sharp images. Yes, I had a problem with mine but Apple did me right and replaced the phone quickly and efficiently. If your camera is not giving you excellent results there’s something wrong with it. Get it replaced.